Saturday Review 3-21: This week around the blogiverse

****Plans are moving forward for the Book Blogger Retreat. It’s tentatively scheduled for July 18-19 in Portland, OR. Unfortunately for me, I’ll have to miss it – that’s the weekend before BlogHer’09 in Chicago – but it looks like Trish (Hey Lady!) and her team are making some good plans.

****The Spring edition of the 24-Hour Read-a-thon – renamed “Dewey’s Read-a-Thon” in honor of its founder, and now hosted on its own blog – will take place April 18-19. (I always seem to have other plans during Read-a-thon weekends…but I’ll be thinking of everyone who tries to go the distance!)

Do you have a geeky spouse – or are you the geeky spouse? Refer to this checklist (via The Park Bench) if you need to make sure. It actually describes life around my house pretty well – it’s a bit scary. And if you’re spouse-free, here are some tips for living the single life (#5 is my favorite).

>For the birds, via Not Always Right (nothing especially pointed about this one – it just made me laugh)

Call Center | Winchester, KY, USA

(I work at a call center for truck drivers.)

Me: “Thank you for calling the service center. My name is ***, are you experiencing a breakdown?”

Trucker: “Yeah, I need a new windshield.”

Me: “OK, sir. What happened to your current windshield?”

Trucker: “A bird went through it.”

Me: “Alright, a bird hit your windshield and cracked it, correct?”

Trucker: “No, the bird went THROUGH the windshield. It’s sitting in the passenger seat now and the windshield has a hole in it.”

Me: “So, what kind of bird is it?”

Trucker: “… a dead one.”

Blogthings Quiz of the Week:
The snippet in the feed reader for this quiz was “Are you more physical, mental, or spiritual?” Turns out I’m mental. Like that’s a surprise to anyone…

You Are Mind

If you dream it, then you can do it. You are very mentally sharp and strong.
You enjoy challenging yourself both at work and with studies. You love mastering difficult tasks.

You thrive in new environments, even stressful ones. You are able to study everything objectively.
You have a upbeat attitude, and won’t be deterred easily. You are open minded and optimistic about the future.

Despite the fact it’s better known for other forms of entertainment, SoCal does have a thriving bookish community, and My Friend Amy will be telling us more about it in her new recurring feature, “So Cal Lit Scene.” As a fellow resident of said scene, I’m looking forward to this!

Question and answer: Is there an “unspoken code” to lending paperbacks?

Amy – It jumped up a LOT this week, between that feed file of SV Moms bloggers and some new blogs I found through people who entered my giveaway. The current count is 466, but some of them are far less active than others. Yikes, it is a lot, isn’t it?